Friday Estimates: Spider-Man has $50.5 million Reasons to Celebrate its Homecoming

July 8th, 2017

Spider-Man: Homecoming dominated the box office on Friday and in a pleasant surprise, it beat predictions with $50.5 million during its opening day. Its opening day vs. its previews is almost identical to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, which would put the film on pace for $130 million over the weekend. Spider-Man: Homecoming did earn better reviews, while both movies earned a solid A from CinemaScore, and many more kids have no school on Monday compared to when Guardians debuted. All of this should help its legs. On the other hand, Homecoming could have a bigger Fanboy Effect, as Spider-Man is a much more established character. Because of that, I’m going to be a little more cautious and predict a $125 million opening weekend. This is still simply fantastic and the only downside is Sony and Disney have to work together to make this work in the long term. This is Sony’s second best domestic opening of all time. (Spider-Man 3 is the only one that beats it.) It could open with more than last year’s number one domestic hit for the studio, Ghostbusters, earned in total. Sony has a lot of reasons to work with Disney to keep Spider-Man in the MCU.

Despicable Me 3 was way back with $11.33 million. However, while this is down 61% from its opening Friday, it is still better than expected. Perhaps it will even avoid a 50% drop-off during its sophomore stint with just over $36 million.

Baby Driver was down just 36% from its opening Friday at $3.9 million. Because it was a Wednesday release, it’s not going to bounce back on Saturday, but it also doesn’t need to. Assuming it has the same internal multiplier, it will earn just over $13 million over the full weekend for a two-week total of $57 million. It will be just days away from covering its entire $34 million production budget, while its reviews suggest it will be in theaters for a long time.

Wonder Woman matched predictions nearly perfectly with $2.94 million and will earn to $10 million over the weekend. It might need a little push to get over $400 million domestically, but I think Warner Bros. will help it get there.